Target unchanged for Carrollton

Published
12:00 am CDT, Thursday, April 3, 2014

CARROLLTON — Three seasons removed from the school’s first-ever state baseball championship, veteran coach Greg Pohlman and his Carrollton Hawks find themselves in the role of locating their team identity.

Six games into the 2014 season, the Hawks are 4-2 with Thursday’s Western Illinois Valley Conference South Division game with Greenfield rained out. Not bad by record standards. But there’s no need trying to make comparisons to the 2011 Hawks, who were 31-1-1 and rolled through their competition en route to the Class 1A title.

“These kids are working to get better as we go,” said Pohlman, in his 27th season. “They’ve all played junior high ball, the majority of them. They know what’s expected out of them. They work hard and do what they’re supposed to do.

“It’s all going to come. That’s your goal. You go and win the first game, then you try and win a state championship. Right now we’re going to win one at a time and see what happens.”

The Hawks opened the season dropping an 11-5 decision to Triopia, then reeled off three wins in a row against Brussels (6-2), Griggsville-Perry (3-1) and Lebanon (10-5) before being humbled by Civic Memorial 13-3 in five innings Monday. The Hawks kicked off WIVC South play with a 6-0 shutout of Greenfield on Tuesday.

But losing to the Eagles was no alarming moment. The Eagles are a 3A school and the Hawks looked to add opponents to their schedule that will help them become battle-tested as the year moves along.

“If you can come down and play with these guys, in the rest of our games, we can compete with anybody,” said Pohlman, who followed up the state championship season by going 23-7 and winning a regional. “When you’re young, and that’s no excuse, we’re just going to keep learning, we’re going to keep getting better. Just like last year, we were young and at the end, we were able to put it all together (and finish 8-14 with a fifth consecutive regional championship). That’s what we’re going to try and do again this year.”

Carrollton will rely on a pitching staff that will not depend on one true No. 1. It will be a pitching-by-committee staff that Pohlman said can see any number of nine players throw the baseball, including juniors Luke Palan and Jacob Smith, who took the loss against CM. Also, senior Ethan Frye, sophomore Cole Brannan, junior Cory Dover, sophomore Ben DeWitt, junior Logan Gardner, senior Caleb Watts and freshman Jerrett Smith, Jacob Smith’s brother and starting catcher, can also take the ball on the mound.

“We’re a young pitching staff,” Pohlman said. “… They’re all going to be good pitchers. We’ve got a lot of people that can throw the ball.

“Pitching is always ahead of your hitting. We played (last) weekend and we had 13 hits in one game and seven hits in the next game and then we probably came out against (CM) and had two hits. It’s baseball. If the Cardinals do it, we all can, too.”

Jacob Smith is leading the offense at .474, and Palan is off to a .421 average. Brannan is hitting .333, Summers is hitting .312 and Gardner is hitting .300. The team is batting .285 and the pitching staff has a sparkling 1.06 ERA.

If Carrollton can keep similiar numbers throughout the season, this team will win many more games along the way in 2014.

“It’s learning, it’s wanting to learn and doing the right things,” Pohlman said. “When you have a responsibility hustling and doing it and getting it done, and if you don’t get it done, you get told how to do it. You just live with it and go on.

“We’re just going to take our time and at the end of the year, we’ll take our chances and see how we roll.”